Nightingale - Much Anticipated Songbird Fork Which is Soon Going to Have its First Release

Songbird Music Player was among the most beloved Open Source project and it still is for many, except for Linux users. Songbird is still open source, but developers behind Songbird have decided to discontinue support for Linux and the concentrate on Mac and Windows versions of Songbird. Nightingale is a Songbird fork which is undergoing rapid development and is pitched to become the Songbird alternative for Linux users.

Open Source Software Never Really Dies
This is something we all learned from the history of Open Source software in the past 15-20 years. An Open Source software never really dies.

Take for example, Clementine Music Player. Amarok 1.4 was among the favorite music player for Linux when I first started using Ubuntu some 3-4 years ago. But with the advent of KDE 4, developers decided to rewrite Amarok from scratch which resulted in the Amarok 2.0 series. Though Amarok 2.0 had made great strides recently, especially with the brilliant Amarok 2.3.1 "The Bell" release, Amarok 1.4 was not ready to die yet.

Amarok 1.4 was brought back from its ashes by its very own users and it was named Clementine. Clementine is now actively developed and is getting rave reviews everywhere.

The Nightingale Story
The Nightingale story is not so different from that of Clementine. Bottom line is the same though, developers decided to ditch something which users were not ready for. But Unlike Amarok developers, who were pitching for an even better Amarok 2.0 by discontinuing Amarok 1.x series, Songbird developers have discontinued support for Linux entirely. This makes Nightingale is an even more important Open Source project.

Nightingale is a community support project for the powerful media player, Songbird. It is developed by a proud community and we are equally proud to bring you the most extensible and feature-rich media experience. Featuring gapless playback, smart playlists, equalizer, Last.fm integration and hundreds of addons, Nightingale has it all. - Nightingale Community

Songbird 1.8.0 was released recently and the first major release of Nightingale is expected to be based on Songbird 1.8.0. Support the project and celebrate Open Source.